West Virginia’s coronavirus response coordinator attempted to put citizens at ease over the spread of coronavirus in schools, contending today that there’s little evidence of spreading because of classroom encounters.
Clay Marsh’s remarks came as the state defends its policies from an injunction filed by the West Virginia Education Association and as another teachers union, the American-Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, weighs its options.
Marsh’s remarks today also varied from an affidavit in earlier court challenges to the state’s map of virus spread. In the cases filed by citizens who believed the map was being unequally applied to schools, Marsh had said gathering for long periods in classrooms “increases the likelihood of community transmission” compared to settings like bars or restaurants.
The state Department of Education lists 21 outbreaks of two or more cases in West Virginia schools, but Marsh today said there’s little evidence those cases are spreading from person to person in classrooms.
“I think it’s really exciting that, looking around the country and specifically looking at West Virginia, what we’re finding is around the country the rate of transmission in schools is really, really low — in fact, less than .1 percent per student as far as confirmed tests go and less than .2 percent for teachers as far as confirmed tests go,” Marsh said.
“And in West Virginia, we have seen very few outbreaks directly in school classes. In fact, to date, I don’t believe we’ve found any direct evidence any classroom spread of covid-19, and that is very, very good news. With the appropriate approaches being used in the schools, it appears the classroom is a safe place to be.”
The cases of coronavirus in West Virginia schools appear to be brought in by the community, Marsh said, usually by adults rather than students.
Marsh, the executive dean for health sciences at West Virginia University, had earlier tweeted out an article from The Atlantic that reached similar conclusions. It carried the headline “Schools aren’t superspreaders.”
Schools Aren't Super-Spreaders – The Atlantic https://t.co/ZKpsvPA6UF
— Clay Marsh, MD (@claymarsh) October 12, 2020
West Virginia uses a color-coded map to display the spread of coronavirus, with the Saturday map determining school status.
Doddridge, Harrison and Upshur counties, which were orange Saturday night, have classrooms closed and athletics halted. Another county that was orange, Mingo, is now red. And yet another county, Barbour, made its own choice for remote learning for a couple of days because of coronavirus cases.
There have been several courtroom challenges to the map.
Two that have already been considered and rejected by circuit judges contended the map has been applied inequitably. Those cases suggested students have lost their opportunities for classroom instruction and extracurricular activities even though the map does not affect other gathering places such as restaurants, bars or churches.
In those cases that were heard Sept. 25 and Oct. 6, lawyers for the state used Marsh’s affidavit to say schools require heightened precautions because while people may come and go from bars and restaurants, students and teachers are together in classrooms for hours at a time.
Marsh said then: “The real difference between businesses, bars, restaurants, other commercial enterprises and schools ·is that there is much more gathering potential in schools with the substantially increased numbers of people that are interacting each day, and the prolonged contact at school from a pure quantitative time at a single location and the mixture of vulnerable adult teachers with a myriad of students all coming from different home addresses and communities increases the likelihood of community transmission.”
His affidavit continued, “in schools, even if every detail is taken to reduce classroom spread, there is still often a rise in the rate and number of people that become infected with COVID. The reason for this is prolonged exposure to children and adults in the classroom, where an expanded number of ‘collisions,’ or person-to-person contacts, occur at these venues.
The West Virginia Education Association is now suing over the map, contending it has been altered over and over with a goal of keeping classrooms open and football teams on fields.
WVEA’s motion for an injunction is set to be heard Oct. 23 before Kanawha Circuit Judge Carrie Webster.
Dale Lee, WVEA’s president, was incredulous about Marsh’s comments today.
Lee made reference to ongoing decisions by individual schools to close because of conavirus spread. Examples include Ruffner Elementary in Kanawha County and East Dale Elementary in Marion County.
“My take is, it is a spreading area because otherwise why would you have all these schools that are closing,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “Secondly, if schools are not the spreader then why do you have a map specifically for schools?”
Gov. Jim Justice today characterized Marsh’s comments about the relative safety of schools as good news.
“Today he reported to us some news that is terrific — terrific news — in that kids in the classroom and exposure to the teachers and the spread and all that stuff, for all practical purposes, is extremely low, extremely safe, and everything,” Justice said.
But Justice also concluded that communities need to remain focused on keeping coronavirus out of schools.
“It says that every single, solitary last one of us still needs to be concerned about our kids, about our teachers, about our service personnel,” Justice said. “We need to keep our guard up about our schools.
“Now, it’s great news. It’s great, great news. But from my standpoint, I want to say just this, I’ll be worried about those kids, those teachers, those service personnel. I’ll be worried until we get to the end of this.’